SunnyD Vodka Seltzer tastes nothing like SunnyD - or vodka

You might recall Sunny Delight from the Formica-countered kitchens of your youth. It’s the drink kids downed while watching “Clarissa Explains It All” or playing Tetris, possibly after rummaging through the options in the fridge, just like in the commercial: “We got some soda, OJ, purple stuff, Sunny Delight …”

The vibrant-orange beverage has been around since 1963, but 1990s kids - now all grown up into drinking-age millennials in a prime marketing demographic - have a particular affinity for it. Since millennial nostalgia is big business (at this very moment, there’s a Super Mario Bros. movie in theaters and Blink-182 is on tour; also, scrunchies) it should surprise exactly no one that marketing wizards have determined that what 2023 needs is … SunnyD Vodka Seltzer.

The new product neatly marries multiple of-the-moment trends with brand loyalty forged during the Clinton administration: There’s the ongoing popularity of slender-canned, low-ABV seltzers (SunnyD Vodka Seltzer is 4.5 percent, which is on par with some light beers). And consumers are increasingly flocking both to canned cocktails (unlike many of the malt-beverage hard seltzers you’ll find on grocery shelves, SunnyD’s seltzer is mixed with real vodka) and juicy flavors in their booze.

The visceral reaction of shoppers of a certain age encountering SunnyD vodka has made for social media fodder. “Did y’all know they had Sunny D flavored vodka?” someone tweeted. “The millennials are officially in charge.”

“I don’t care if these seltzer flavors are getting out of control,” TikToker Loryn Powell said. “I want to see a Capri Sun seltzer. Kool-Aid? Sign me up.”

But is spiked SunnyD more than a gimmick to show off once and then relegate to the dustbin of history, along with Beanie Babies and the Macarena? We ordered some to try out.

First, let’s consider the visuals: The packaging borrows from the iconic-to-some blue-accented bottles of their youth and from the currently fashionable white seltzer cans. But the drink itself isn’t the safety-orange hue buyers might have expected. Instead, it’s mostly clear, with a bit of cloudiness to indicate that there is very little of the promised “real fruit juices” in the mix. And it turns out that there’s no actual SunnyD involved here at all; the company instead promises “the same great orange taste as the SUNNYD our fans know and love.”

I’m not so sure of that. The flavor of the boozy version isn’t nearly as in-your-face orange as its inspiration. In fact, several colleagues who sipped alongside me thought it read more like generic citrus than vibrant orange. “Could be grapefruit,” one mused. “Could be Fresca,” suggested another. There’s a hint of a tart edge that brings to mind an Emergen-C package you down to ward off a cold, but that’s a plus to my taste buds, not a negative. This grown-up SunnyD’s sweetness comes from stevia (which helps keep it to 95 calories per can with no added sugar), and there’s a little bit of a cloying note (I’m no stevia fan).

But here’s the most notable thing about the drink: It tastes absolutely nothing like alcohol. There’s no sharpness of vodka to alert you that you’re imbibing an adult beverage, not sipping from something your mom packed in a lunchbox. In other words, it might be very easy to get looped on more than just pre-flip-phone-era warm fuzzies. Still, there’s something about the idea of a boozy drink made with a kids’ quaff that feels transgressive, like giving a child candy cigarettes (which, shockingly, still exist?).

In its favor, the formula is pleasantly light, with none of the viscous, tongue-coating mouthfeel that plagues some alcoholic seltzers. Most of us found it to be generally pretty good, if seltzers are your thing. But as we tasted it alongside the original, booze-less SunnyD formula, some of us just wanted a little more flavor. One colleague poured a splash of the original SunnyD into the vodka seltzer. “That’s more like it,” he said after a sip.